I am reading along with these lectures (in German, first time reader of the CPR) and this part of the reading blew me away. I don't know what has taken me so long to finally read the critique, but I think I won't be reading anything else for a while :-0 Thanks for uploading them!
I wonder what professor Wolff thinks about insights into mind that we got from computer science. For example, it turns out that something as simple as recognizing objects in an image is incredibly difficult and complicated to teach to a computer.
Is modus operandi of a computer same or similar to that of human mind? If one establishes such isomorphism, then one can move to the question of what we can learn from computers about mind. I think both move by very different kinds of causal processes. HUMAN mind moves by biological processes capable of generating an experience which is involved in constitution of meaning of the utterances like -- "you Dog!" For a computer, such utterance means just mimicry of certain sequence of behaviours which are equivalent merely to the behaviours displayed by a human when she experiences 'humiliation' .
"The mind itself is the law giver of the nature." The nature is just appearance to our perception. However it depends on our mind to interpret the laws of nature. There is something subjective to our "knowledge".
Why is Wolff so sure that the notion of individuals as the law-givers of nature undermines his ethical theory? All of the renderings of the Categorical Imperative (which Kant says are all equivalent) seem to me to be capable of being read as applying to an individual by him/herself (with the possible exception of the Kingdom of Ends rendering, but still, every individual is an "end in themselves") Therefore, the rule for every moral act would be discoverable by every person individually, without the need for concerning oneself with the existence of others. Duty would call, so to speak, regardless of whether others truly existed. I have to think Wolff has thought of this...what am I missing here?
the moral law involves the conception of universality (the universalization formalization) and would be very strange to say that the meaning of universality is some how subjective to my being and may not apply to other beings. when we do correct practical reason, we thereby regard the possibility of moral agents that follow the same law because we conceive of the will has involving some some aspect of university. while we cannot determine aprori the actual laws of nature (must rely on science and even then fail under the problem of induction) apparently to kant, we solve the problem on ethical theory if we say that we have found the one true moral law (or "regard oneself as doing so"), and the good will is conditioned by the fact others exist, a good will is good and what u will is what another moral agent would will with correct moral reasoning since the moral law is universal (involves university of all agents). Kant doesn't want to say we know the true laws of nature but in C of practical reason he gives contradictory text where in on place he seems to say we do have knowledge of things-in-themsleves and thats the moral law as a thing-in-itself since its objective suture references only is formal structure (moral law is just a maxim and universality so a thing-"in"-itself). Maybe what I have said saves Kant or makes things more confusing :)
“I am the lawgiver of Nature”. Problem:who are you? You are an appearance in my realm of appearance. You are an appearance I’ve synthesized. It’s not clear how there can be two consciousnesses. This fact one unity of consciousness undermines his ethical theory. Who do I owe debts to? Moral obligations? Lie to? Hegel took all this he distinguishes world spirit organizes the world from self
Mind affects itself. Contra Descartes , mind only knows the self the same way it knows other objects. It represents itself. Not in itself. It imposed temporality. It imposes a rule a category . They’re unified due to temporal order. 😊
As profound, seemly absurd and perhaps startling as Kant’s conclusion “the mind is the law giver of nature” is at first hearing. If we take transcendental idealism seriously and follow Kant’s argument it is an inevitable conclusion. The unity of consciousness guarantees the uniformity of nature. I must say that while I I don’t totally buy in to Kant’s whole argument and I think discoveries of modern science would seriously modify it. Nevertheless, I think the essentials of transcendental idealism would still hold up after that modification and I think it is a plausible interpretation of human knowledge.
I don't see it knocking out the moral theory. 1. If the consistency of perception of other finite minds is the same with or without their thing-in-itself reality, the "moral law within" is there under either alternative. 2. I see objection 1 as being something more than just a dumb stgatement of "you will percieve me punching you in the face regardless". 3. This is neither a doctrine that other understandings have a freedom to construct a significantly different world nor that they don't exist in themselves. 4. Maybe it would have been better if Kant had done more to explain reasons to believe in the reality of other persons, such as the problem of explaining my existence without them but he did believe in both things and if only by extension, persons in themselves.
It is parsimonious to assume other minds exist in individuals exhibiting mind like behaviour, since apperception offers no particular obstacle to them doing so.
I think wolf’s right that Kant doesn’t really deal w/ the problem of how we recognize other people as people but wrong that it is impossible to do so within Kant’s framework.
54:00. But doesn’t the mind also have the Incredible ability to conceive something beyond itself that exists despite never really being comprehensible. I’m thinking of the noumena but I’m also thinking of the concept of infinity. From St. Anselm to Descartes to Levinas, philosophers have spoken of an infinity that is not a number but a quality of being N +. Whatever we can conceive, the infinite represents more. In the epistemology of Levinas, other sentient beings are “infinite” because we realize that their consciousness is greater than or equal to our own. We can’t comprehend an equal consciousness perfectly and still have consciousness left over to apprehend, imagine and recollect it, or integrate it into our larger worldview. Thus we realize that we must reduce another consciousness in order to comprehend it. He is Matt, the Republican that has anxiety about clutter. Even if get much more complex than that, we are describing only a portion of another consciousness. According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky created characters that he himself refused to understand fully. By acknowledging that his apperception of his characters was reductive, he was implying that his characters were not fictional but living consciousnesses that transcended his authorial omnipotence. If one make this argument in literature, it must be even more forceful in reality. The human mind is the most complex thing we’ve ever discovered in the universe and everyone seems to have the same mind and (if we’re honest) seems to be every bit as complex as ourselves, even if we can never see that complexity in full.
I’d argue this is the ‘trick’ of the mind. It’s useful to have thoughts about things we cannot comprehend. That is to say to consider the possibility of things beyond our normal faculties by mean of extension of the things we can comprehend. So we don’t conceive of infinity or a character with detail beyond our close consideration, but rather we have the ability to consider such notions might be possible. It’s like knowing a name but not the content. The characters of Dostoyevsky have the potential to be extended because we know how complex human characters are, the mind imposed this extension into the existing character that is created and then it seems like there is a whole character to be written (even when it’s not) in entirety beyond what you have already considered. Likewise, we can put extension onto counting. We cannot comprehend infinity but instead think about its possibility by means of extension of something that is larger than what we can usually count past. If we evolved to count in the thousands and see these things immediately in our visual field like we can do instantly with ‘10 apple s’ infinity would seem smaller. Just as the mind uses ‘tricks’ which we can exploit in simple visual illusions, it uses tricks to help talk about and use notions which are beyond its already had synthesis. So infact it is a trick of language and the mind to think that we can conceive something greater than itself. Even the first statement undermines the most major law of nature (we have imposed on it) : The first Law of Thermodynamics.
I think the heart of Kant's argument in regards to pure intuition is that unity cannot be thought of as a 'pure' unity or else we get the night in which all cows are block. Unity must stand in some sort of relation to plurality in order to be a 'living' unity. Time as the basic unifying structure of consciousness needs to stand in relation to an outside plurality in order for us to make sense of it. There is an essential intertwinement for Kant of Time and Space and their distinction is brought about in analysis. But this intertwinement is absolutely fundamental for the whole of Kant's philosophy because it is the basis for many other distinctions that Kant makes regarding the relation between subject/object as a relation that is characterized by a correlation of the two terms.
Maybe somebody remembers in which lecture Professor gave the example explaining categories as rules to make the rules, which contained Boss giving rules about making some object?
Alice Way perhaps you are talking about the example he gave a couple lectures ago about working for a game company and having a boss describe several conditions according to which you must design a game. For example: the game must consist of pieces which can only be acquired from the company so that it can be profitable, it must be something that can be played to completion within a reasonable time, it must be something that can be played by at least 2 people but no more than 4 etc. Rules which set up a space within which other rules - the game rules - can operate.
It's shocking that he doesn't talk about concomitancy between rules of representations which leads to the formation of the transcendental object, x. In apprehension, a manifold is treated as a group of absolute representations, but nonetheless they are ordered, such order is empirically given to us. This order is changed when Concomitancy happens, and we have a manifold with a different order, which becomes the x. The concept of this x, is the Self or synthetic unity of apperception. This threefold synthesis, represents three qualities of time, namely, order, succession and simultaneity.
@@vp4744, A manifold necessarily means ordered arrangement of representations. These representations are ordered as per empirical rules, which get concomited and we have a general object x, in the three level synthesis. The order is implicit in the manifold because time implies order or succession in general.
I don't think that Kant actually means that other people do not exists. I think that what Kant is saying is that reality as he sees it is just a construct of his mind to explain his sensory input. Imagine if you were in a room that is totally cut off from the rest of reality except for a small hole through which a paper with numbers comes in. Your job is to try and understand those numbers, try and predict what the future numbers might be, and then to write down instructions and pass them into a hole. So, in order to understand the numbers, you create an interpretation of what is going on outside of your room, how those numbers are generated, and how your instructions affect all that. So outside reality to you is this interpretation that you have created to explain and react to numbers that are getting. Now, a part of your interpretation might be an idea that in the outside world there are other people in the rooms like yours that are doing the same think as you. Moreover, instructions that they send out affect the numbers you receive and vice versa. Are there really people out there doing the same thing as you? There is no out there other than your interpretation of the numbers that you receive. Does that then mean that you can ignore people in your interpretation and send whatever instructions you want through the hole? No, because you still have to receive numbers, interpret them and send instructions out. The best interpretation that you have is the one with other people on the outside, and you can't ignore it.
Reality for Kant is not something which is only in our mind. This is completely wrong. "Reality" itself applies through the categories and so what is outside of us lies really outside of us. The things in themselfs are nowhere - not outside, because they are space and timeless. I don't see the problem with Kant's ethical philosophy either, because we can always apply the categories to things in themselfs, without knowing the truth of what which we apply.
How do you know there were nine buses? Maybe we owe a debt of gratitude to the greatest unity of consciousness, Kant himself? But if I am talking about a horse I am also talking about horses in general. I don't see why each finite mind can not have a unity of consciousness. It would be true if I were talking about a universal mind. Also, Pro. Wollf really undermines his own credibility when judging the character of DJT. I think. Also, Marxism has been tried with disastrous results. Marxism does not fit into a unity of consciousness that says we ought to treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated.
Kant is considered one of the most important philosophers ever even in America. While it is true not many American professors are Kant scholars, due to the dominance of Anglo-American style analytic philosophy, every student of philosophy has read some Kant. It’s therefore not too surprising that some onto ur to take an interest. There are many more Kantian ethicists than there are experts on his critique, though
This part right here is what got me interested in Kant. I recognized that a lot of things that Kant said about mind and reason, apply to financial modeling, and modeling in general. What Kant would call perceptions, a modeler would call observations or data points. Than, what Kant would call structure of object in mind (i forgot exact phrase and I can't listen to video while writing a comment on the phone) that would be the actual model of the thing you are trying to represent. What ties the model back to reality is the ability to predict what future observations will be. Similarly, what makes knowledge and reason more than just a set of perceptions is the ability to make predictions of what future perceptions will be.
Mirza Borogovac, it was structure of judgement. But somehow am very puzzled by what you said about Kant has inspired some financial arguments because what Kant has said was very abstract and metaphysically questionable, furthermore Kant's critique is basically about phenomenology and the latter is not reducible to something as concrete as that. Anyway though i believe you owe me more explanation regarding the subject.
Kant's critiques is about things like knowledge and reason and basically human mind. I am saying that there are parallels between human mind and financial/mathematical/other models. You can think of a model as an understanding outside of human mind of something in the real word. Better yet, human mind is a type of model of real world. What is a model? Model is a simplified representation of real world. A geographic map is a model. A formula in physics is a model. You can have a model in a spreadsheet, or model made out of clay. All the models have some properties in common, and that extends to human mind.
